Episode 14: Shaking up the world of Private Equity

0:02Welcome to the Dealmaker Uncut Podcast where we speak to some of the UK's most exciting entrepreneurs and hear their investment journeys. We'll discuss the challenges, successes and lessons they've learned along the way with expert deals commentary from Jonathan Boyers, head of Alvarez & Marcel Corporate Finance, and me, Chris McGuire, executive editor at Business Cloud. Welcome everyone to the latest episode of the Dealmaker Uncut podcast powered by Alvarez & Marcel. My name is Chris McGuire and I'm the executive editor of Business Cloud. I'd like to thank our growing number of listeners and viewers as the Dealmaker Uncut podcast continues to make the podcast charts around the world.

0:41As always, I'm joined by the multiple award-winning dealmaker himself, Jonathan Boyers. Jonathan's been involved in deals totalling£5 billion during his long and illustrious career, and he's the managing director and head of Alvarez & Marcel's corporate finance practice in the UK. Welcome, Jonathan. Thanks, Chris. Looking forward to this discussion. Okay, now this is the podcast that gets you inside the deal. In the first part of today's show, we're going to be interviewing our very special guest who's travelled up from down south. After that, we're going to have a little break. And when we come back, Jonathan will be leaning on his 35 years of experience in the world of corporate finance to answer some listener questions.

1:16So Jonathan, let's put the listeners and viewers out of their misery. Who are we speaking to today? Thanks Chris. Well a lot of our guests have been either entrepreneurs or CEOs of businesses. Today we're going into the investor community. So today we're going to be speaking to Paul Gedman. Paul was a senior executive at the Huck Group and he was there helping grow their beauty division from 20 million turnover to 600 million turnover before he then co-founded eComplete in 2020. which is offering an alternative to the private equity community for investment. Their first investment or high-profile investment was$50 million into the BeautyTech Group, which basically is one of the key products in the BeautyTech Group is the current body, which is a really high-profile product, which we'll talk about.

2:13The BeautyTech Group was IPO'd at a valuation of$300 million. and so you know a great success story and there's other investments in that group so lots to talk about welcome Paul. Thank you very much for having me gents. Paul I'm going to kick off if I may but we mentioned before that you're at THG before you set up E-Complete when you were at THG you headed up the beauty division I think you oversaw 10 acquisitions didn't you? Yeah that's right so lucky enough to get that CEO role in beauty started with a 20 million acquisition it's actually there for nine and a half years seven and a half as the uh ceo of beauty and yeah when i left it was 600 million uh revenue that was 10 acquisitions a lot of organic growth lots of great people um and yeah like good timing everything's always timing i think we really benefited from the shift offline to online and price arbitrage globally um so yeah good dynamics that allowed us to deliver that success yeah and actually we've we've got a lot of thg listeners as well actually then in 2020 you joined forces with another thg colleague former ceo of my protein andy duckworth uh voted mr burnley in 1987 to launch manster-based e-complete to provide an alternative to private equity in your own words paul what problem were you sort of trying to fix yeah so me me and andy were we were always going to do something together we we worked seven and a half years at the Hutt Group, ran the two divisions and never fell out once.

3:46Came close, came close once. But yeah, we never fell out. And I think he'd claim he's Mr. Burnley for the last 44 years. So yeah, I suppose we really liked the e-commerce space. We felt like we had unique experience. We wanted to be in that space again. Felt like even though it was maturing, there was a huge amount of opportunity and then we were just studying different models do we go and start up our own business you can probably do one of those every five six seven years and you know the success rate is is not certain and we started looking at the private equity model like you know the thing that really resonates and still still remember now was me seeing the fortune 400 in the u.s um which is the list of the 400 most wealthy people and the biggest category within that I thought it would have been tech or oil and gas and it was actually private equity founders so caught my attention and then we started studying that model and it's a phenomenal model and we actually were then quite underwhelmed with the returns that those top quartile top decile p funds were returning you know we re-engineered some of our history into those metrics we thought actually you know there's there can definitely be a better outcome here and then there was no dedicated specialist e-commerce d2c investors that had experience as operators we'll we'll come on to talk a bit more about the fundraising process and and you know how you actually operate the investment fund but i think it might just be worth um talking initially about the the investment that we've just mentioned already um the the beauty tech group it would be great if you could just talk about that investment and it's quite a high profile investment and just that story leading up to the IPO.

5:36Yeah I mean our first investment so it couldn't have gone any better. I think Lawrence, Andrew and Sam are all great. Lawrence and Andrew are the founders but actually Sam Glynn they consider him a founder. He's really driven, well he's made a huge impact in that business. So first of all you start with those three great people. I think the biggest difference really, I think when private equity are looking at deals, they're typically looking for a good brand, a good category in market growth back in a good management team. I'd say they kind of ball the ocean on DD and they're actually thinking about downside protection.

6:14And these guys had been through a couple of private equity rounds before, so that helped because they were familiar with the process. And then we, from day one really, we've kind of built our own investment case. We've got a three-year plan that we go through with the management. And because we're in there with them in the trenches on day one, so their problems are our problems, their successes, you know, our successes were literally alongside them. Some of those growth opportunities that we identify, we'll put some of our incomplete resource into that business to help execute on those. You know, we always bring ourselves out the business, you know, when it's proven its business case, we'll recruit its own people.

6:52But, yeah, I think our starting point of us, we've been in their shoes we're equals you know and we share your problems with us because we know there's problems every day especially when you're international internationalizing an e-commerce business so i think the relationship's really good and i think we have that very different approach day one we're thinking about okay how do we grow this together and how do we solve those problems together and i do think that kind of mindset and approach is a is a really different you know position from where traditional private equity is but it it couldn't have gone better there was a lot of transformation I think what I kind of like people to know actually about our journey is it wasn't just that great business great category and you just accelerate in that same business the business has actually been through a lot of transformation a third of its sales were own brand today 100 % of its sales are own brand it's much more international than it was it acquired two other brands within that so it was current body when we bought it it's now the beauty tech group because actually it's this home of beauty tech um so yeah what is really pleasing is that that transformation of the journey it wasn't just simply backing a winner and helping it accelerate there was lots of moments that um you know where decision making was was not obvious um but the execution of it was was exceptional a lot of the private equity houses that we deal with don't get very involved in the management of their businesses they'll often put a non-exec director on the board maybe a chairman and and they they do provide some support but it sounds like you're at the other end of the spectrum where you're bringing quite a lot of added value and getting quite heavily involved in the decision making process and that that sounds like that's a feature of what you're offering i'm interested in how that how you work with the management team the decisions that are driving growth are they your decisions or their decisions i you know i assume that the board's discussing things but and there's different stages so when we are doing rdd then we will we don't really bother with ims from management teams and you know current body actually was at the end of a process with um with stifle actually that hadn't been successful and you could see that IM was going in a direction actually that felt like they probably had to go in to kind of raise the capital and when we start plugging the data in and looking at the actual business, those metrics that matter for that business and the potential going forward, it was really clear for us to connect with the management team and go, God, you've got something really special here and they're like, yeah, we have.

9:33It's harder for traditional PE to see it because it's not in the historics. you can't financially remodel it but it's in the data points so i think our approach because we've been operators we look at the we look at the data points that matter for that business the e-commerce data points that matter for that business at that time we're not necessarily looking to you know financial modeling you know and looking at the previous and rolling it forward which is quite typical of private equity so we connected really early to go wow this is gold this is gold and it wasn't necessarily that obvious so I think that kind of gave us a really good starting point but it just allowed us to connect with the management and then feel like they were being backed because we could see what they could see and I do think that's often missed by traditional private equity if you've not been in those businesses and you're kind of looking at a macro level.

10:23So then there are you know our starting position is kind of we can get comfortable with the investment based on our commercial DD that we do and then really it's how well you connect with management on that plan and if you get comfort and collectively going yes this is the right direction and we're there to support so those growth opportunities if there's no resource that the business has got today we've got some resource that can put in but the priority is always that business recruiting its own resource and making its own decisions but you know we're we're like we're in the trenches with them but it's always that the management team that have got to make the decision and be responsible for the execution of it How many staff has E-Complete got now?

11:0830, 30 35. Okay so it's quite a big big group then. Yeah. And it's four investments you've made. Yeah. Some of our people actually went into Current Body and stayed in there permanently which is great. The majority kind of come back out because they're just helping set something up or they're helping bridge the gap of resource or maybe some knowledge. But it's really always about that business being standalone, recruiting its own people. And we're pretty good in terms of being a buffer for that business. If they need resource or they need any expertise anywhere, they can come and call on it from us.

11:43So there'll be quite a lot of private equity investors watching the podcast and thinking, oh, I wouldn't mind if I could set up my own fund. um it would be it would be useful interesting to hear how you went around raising funds for the investments yeah and it's definitely hard and it's not our skill set um we've yeah we've raised 100 million over the last four and a half years um so people react to that quite well so our indication is yeah we're doing okay um because i think people are quite surprised we managed to do that but it's hard i think what's really what you realize is you're trading your reputation for capital and then on every investment you're you're backing that investment again with your that your professional life um which may seem a bit dramatic but you know that it that people are giving you capital because they believe in you but you know they'll only believe in you if you keep delivering success um so it's a really yeah it's a really important process to try and get the right shareholders on board and even more important to back the right assets and help them grow and provide an exit and the type of investor it sounds like you've got a whole range of different types of investors with private individuals family offices yeah and again not through choice or strategy or anything it's uh it is speaking to people and and seeing who resonated with us and we do have a different model to traditional private equity and most of our investors are probably in some other funds or have done some private equity investing.

13:20So we do get feedback all the time of, okay, this is different. This is interesting. We like to think we've not got a reputation really in the private equity world yet. We're starting to build one from current body, the success of that exit.

13:36But we've not really, we've not had that reputation. So we've got a story that sounds interesting and exciting for people. but it really is all about like distributions and delivery and and PE's not really been doing much of that lately so we do feel like we're in a we're a good place to stand out yeah so you've you've effectively done a fund a fundraise for that first investment and that and then that's absolutely flown and so you've then followed followed on with a similar fundraiser on other investments it might just be worth talking for a minute about the IPO of that of beauty tech because obviously that was another transaction that will have it sounds like that created created value value realization opportunity for people yeah i mean so the the businesses like shut the lights out you know over performed even our ambitious plan um so in theory it should have been really easy to you know we should have had people knocking our door down um 10 times the ebitda in four year period and the growth's been um obviously very very solid as well but you're in a period where in my view private equity is just paused really is probably the best way of saying it portfolios are fairly clogged up with i'd say possibly overpriced assets that may be underperformed and a lot of people made some heroic investments about three or three or four years ago so yeah i understand that so there's there's um a lot of hesitation in that in the p world and you're then trying to sell uh you know the beauty tech group for 300 million you've got to find one investor to pay 300 million in a time where private equity is fairly paused.

15:14People haven't really been able to identify the winners in e-commerce either as well, historically looking at, okay, what deals worked and what didn't work and how did they retrospectively understand the difference to how do you pick those winners? So I think there's nervousness about DTC investing. There's a general pause in private equity anyway. market conditions aren't great and you know interest rates all those things that combine to be it's really impressive that we've been part of the growth of a great business in that period but the private equity world is just not that active and consumer is very unpopular which you know for us it's quite crazy because we just individually look at that one asset and there's so many growth levers it it looks phenomenal so it was a really commercial decision and you know we went on the journey with obviously uh lawrence and sam and andrew and for us it was quite an easy decision commercially because you're trying to find one private equity house to spend 300 million who's got to believe it's going to go to a billion and um or you're trying to find 20 30 public listed investors that are going to write a check for two to ten um to raise 100 million for a third of the asset because when we listed it we sold 30 % of it and we rolled 70.

16:36So it's quite an easy commercial decision for us in terms of the ability to execute. The business was incredibly well run so we weren't too worried about the process. We were worried about the market but we felt we had more opportunity with that decision rather than waiting for the private equity market to come back and get some momentum. So for us commercially it kind of made sense you're just saying trying to find one person 300 or you're trying to find 20 30 to write smaller checks very different decision for for lawrence for sam and andrew because it changes their world dramatically um so obviously there was more dimensions to to them thinking about it i think commercially we we as a group agreed actually yeah this this feels like uh um the right the right commercial route that we could execute on um but they're living in a very different world so it was really their decision and could they get comfortable with what that looked like for them.

17:25I think the approach has been really, really smart. You know, we got some really good advice. I think definitely call that like Berenberg. We're really, really impressive. But as long as you're not being, you can't be greedy going onto the market. You've got to entice people to come and buy into this great asset so you know that you're going to the market with a discount as well when you're first listing. and you've got to really believe in the long-term trajectory of the business so you really just can't oversell it early on and you've got to be comfortable that you're going to beat the numbers and like you know we can't we can't say that for certain but we're really comfortable with momentum of the business and we're really happy to be rolling forward with 70 % of our stake locked in for a period of time because we really believe in the business and the management.

18:15Yeah, that's a great story and good luck going forward. I'll just pick up on the point you made. A lot of private equity houses are allergic to consumer at the moment, whereas it looks like you're specifically searching it out. So that does provide a differentiation to you. And it might just be worth talking a little bit about the consumer market and how you view that as an investment opportunity and which bits are good. and this this where i think you know we've definitely got an advantage and and private equity is probably more macro and we really we're not as bothered about the market growth because we've been executors and i've never grown a business that's been in line with the market growth you know it you know it's been been faster or slower or you know i'm not saying we've always kind of beat that market growth but i think it's only relevant at very macro level um so we we We look at the business individually itself, look at all those data KPIs that are really important to growing e-commerce businesses and try and understand how that can operate and win in its current territory and how it can win and operate in international territories.

19:27So our starting point is really different. We don't mind what the category is. We're comfortable with beauty and nutrition, but we actually were quite agnostic to the category. And we know there is a large amount of consumer spend. and even if it's slowing down in a territory like the UK, like the most obvious question we got over the last few weeks was, have you grown, you know, been part of that growth journey of a business in the UK that's grown so fast with quite high average order value as well in a really tough market? And like the real answer is, well, you've got to perform well in your domestic market and you've got to win, you've got to outperform, you've got to be the leader.

20:02But actually the best way to grow in a tough market in the UK is grow internationally. so i think we've got more conviction on being able to do that because we've done it whereas a traditional p will be coming into that scenario and it's a story that might might happen but they've got no proof points where our proof points are rolling the data of that business live every day so we can get more conviction and and it so you've moved on and made some other investments now you've made three more investments presumably the success of that first one has encouraged investors into to the next few but how's that been going and and even on the ipo point that the the pros and cons for us um we've sold 30 all the shareholders have sold 30 equally so it's phenomenal for us in terms of awareness you know reputation we get invited to a few more things now you guys wouldn't have had me on this podcast a few weeks ago i don't think so much more I think we've had you on anytime.

20:57Yeah, I didn't realise how unpopular I was.

21:03But, yeah, you've only actually distributed 30 % of the return. So we've not got that capital back. If that had been a full exit, you know, we'd have 5X'd the money for investors. So we could be going, okay, here, let's have some of that capital back for our next deal. So that's probably the negative. That money is still in that asset listed. but we really believe in it so it's going to mature but reputationally for us and the fact that we've been able to help execute that in this kind of a period is so strong for for eComplete but we can't necessarily go back to that pot of capital because it's not been realized yet for people so we're really trying to build up our network of yeah high net worths funds family offices to kind of go and feed our next deals.

21:56Can I ask a question if I may? I remember when I went to see you guys when you did the deal for, you know, the Bugitech Group and Current Body as well. And I might not be remembering this correctly, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you were talking about China and you were talking about the whole e-commerce model and the way they're set up. And am I right in thinking, I think you went out there to see it. So when you were talking about China and the internationalization of the business, you'd seen what they were doing and you were bringing that into your business weren't you yeah and we've been experiencing china for quite a long time actually a lot of the success that we had in beauty back in the group days was in china and that was really on price arbitrage and their head-on technology and it's funny actually because it's really difficult now to make money in china um and that we feel like they're ahead and that cycle is definitely coming to the west where actually it's so easy for people to reach consumers with technology today you know just watch the shopify website and you know connect with some influencers and add spend on meta it's become so easy so actually social is in this maturity cycle for us um social first brand every brand has to be social first you've kind of heard that over the last kind of like five years um china shows that that's that's um that's actually reaching maturity and it's really hard to make money and they're really interesting the next wave which we're really excited about is that ai first piece but yeah look i really believe in china from the supply chain point of view that was about product um the phenomenon manufacturing um really hard to compete with it might just be worth expanding on that point you made about ai quite a lot of our guests in we asked them what what impact ai is going to have on their business and um and how they're operating have you got any thoughts on on that yeah we have and like you know it's fun because it's all theory at the moment and you know different thesis and so all we really know is we feel really comfortable with the change that's coming because being in e-commerce for the last 15 years it's all always about change and you know it's all about google and then it's facebook then it's instagram now it's tiktok and all these tools change around you know you there was a time you had to build your own platform i really wouldn't recommend doing that today you shopify and so the landscape's always changing um the the jobs are often changing as well and the tools are changing so this cycle really is it's super exciting for us because it's it's going to touch every cost level in the business it's going to touch everything it's going to enable efficiencies and yeah it's going to change the landscape i think the really rough theory is a business today that's got 50 headcount that will have 15 to 20 headcount and it'll be doing the same things um but you know at a much greater level so we feel great because consumer's not going anywhere but it's really unpopular for private equity d2c's unpopular for private equity you know and it's not going anywhere it's growing so we're really comfortable in that space of D2C and consumer, which are unpopular, which goes to price.

25:03So it's a good time to be buying assets because there's just not that much, you know, the demand's not matching the supply. When you actually factor in what these businesses could look like in the next three years, it's a really exciting opportunity to be buying well in consumer, be buying, you know, well-priced and being able to really enhance the EBITDA through the use of this technology. When we're running a sale process and we've got a collection of private equity bidders, say we're selling a software business or something, we can get a well-attended auction with private equity funds bidding aggressively.

25:44When we're running a process, if you've got somebody who's raising the funds for a specific deal, then you can look carefully about whether the funding's in place. And so you can be at a slight disadvantage. I think what you're doing is in consumer, there are not that many well attended processes. And so there'll be some businesses that are almost tailored for you because you're interested in them and you can bring something to them that a lot of the plain vanilla P houses wouldn't bring. but you'd probably need to get a deal agreed quite early because you'd need the confidence to go to your investors presumably.

26:25Yeah, we really like getting into exclusivity.

26:32You're even seeing sell-side advisors now not taking, good businesses on paper but just not taking them because they feel like it'll be a wasted time because there's not the buyers there. so some people that are involved in those scenarios we get more leeway because actually they know the market's not there yeah and we're like look yeah we need to be an exclusivity and these are kind of multiples that we're paying and you know let's pull the data and have a look at it so yeah the at the moment the the market's quite um it's quite generous to to our approach because there's not many alternatives but we can get real high conviction quite quickly by just pulling some of that data and and having an early look so we can we can get conviction to the to the vendor um and then we've we've got a decent network that we've built up now but yeah raising capital at the same time as going through a deal process is is fairly tough so we need to get better at that capital raising side which we think we can do you think you'll you'll go out and raise an actual fund so i i don't think there's pros and cons again i think deal by deal provides a better solution to the investor um if you're in a fund uh you know it kind of works both ways right so you you can still have great success and and people roll in even if you have some losses um you know you you're a current body of a 5x um you know can deal with a smaller asset that's not returned you know any any capital so it almost allows you to cover your sins a little bit uh but then it does you know it can distract from your returns so like we like the discipline of deal by deal because we've got to win every game you know it's as simple as that um it's a it's attractive thought kind of just having the pot money there actually because it's really hard doing it both at the same time but i think we just really like the discipline of deal by deal i was going to ask you a question you spoke about d2c you know direct to consumer and you were saying that the private equity, you know, a bit nervous about that.

28:37And I was just listing some of the companies here in the Northwest. P. Louise, you know, Refai, Represent. Obviously, the Beauty Tech Group did the IPO this year. I think Applied Nutrition did their IPO last year as well. They are all massive D2C success stories in the Northwest. So I don't understand why private equity would be so nervous about investing in D2C, that space, when they are five really good examples of businesses absolutely flying. So I agree with you, but that typical private equity approach is looking at the historicals as well and trying to look at the market and what's that market growth.

29:14And these businesses that have just really overperformed and have got a narrow, almost like a narrow set of foundations that have delivered that growth. so if they're over reliant on um tick tock for example or one specific channel we see that as a positive because if you've gained so much traction here well actually if you apply you know the right kind of resource and strategy around the other channels you can start building the business case to say okay well it's achieved this here it means this this this and this this is what the business can look like whereas private equity will see that as a risk that they don't know how to execute on and will it disappear one day that's interesting because there's a company that called hair syrup um not targeting this demographic around the table but fantastic business based in where based in wells just opened up a man's to presence run by somebody called lisa mcleod who's on dragon's den last year and it was six and a half million turnover doing one and a half 1.4 million profit and the dragon said no to it because they couldn't see how they're going to get their return on investment from it it thinks up 10 million now um fascinating story but 50 of their sales came through tiktok shop and actually steven bartlett said i see that as a weakness because you're very dependent on tiktok the point you would say is private equity would look upon that as a bad thing you would look upon it as a good thing yeah yeah if it's gained so much traction in that channel against all the competition that's there why is it winning and then if those dynamics you can still apply to these other channels which are more traditional um and like less exciting for the business as well when you talk to you know you see these businesses really high growth and you talk to them about affiliates and seo they can't really recruit the right person for it it's a you know it's a longer cycle to deliver success but it's you know we we like that diversification of different revenue channels because it protects the business but you're proving that the business is winning in a really competitive space so why won't it win in these other channels that are actually less competitive than tiktok for us that's just about execution i've got one other question and i'm going to see if jonathan's got any questions he wants to finish up on but obviously you're looking to raise 100 million at the moment as well um i don't know if jonathan's got any but um but what's the appetite like success stories really help um and we're just kind of putting that story together because when we when we came into private equity all those things i said earlier on about like we can be very different and we have a very different approach and we think we can win with going through the last 12 months especially we've learned a hell of a lot more and we know a lot more and that AI shift is coming as well so we're just kind of building that story and building more conviction around being someone who's there to buy consumer D to C brands that are over reliant on a channel that haven't built a good finance function out because actually they're busy growing the business and these are all reasons that traditional private that equity wouldn't go into these businesses because they see them as risks.

32:20Because we can deploy people into these businesses, we de-risk those elements, and actually we've built those businesses before in those business units. So it's something we've done, and we've got a great group of people around us that can help us execute. So you can buy well because DTC is unpopular and because consumers are unpopular. And now with this shift with AI, that's super interesting for what returns could look like in the next three or four years. And then we feel like the deal processes aren't really fit for purpose for e-commerce businesses today. It's almost like a deal process and a structure is almost like more stuck in that old economy.

33:00So we're actually trying to also come up with what is a more efficient deal process because we'll get conviction quickly. What drags deals out is the legal structure that you've got to go through, which actually doesn't represent the conviction and actual risk of that one asset. So, yeah, we are bagging all that learning and we're going to be going out in the next couple of months and trying to see what the interest is like to get more support for buying great DTC businesses that have proven themselves in the UK, even if it's only on a couple of channels, but that we really believe can become global leaders as well.

33:41So you're trying to find those winners in the UK and understand if they can be winners in 20 other territories as well it's a really interesting niche big niche consumer e-com but yeah so jonathan have you got any final questions before we finish for the first half of this episode yeah well the only thing that we're thinking when we're talking about the current body and beauty tech um we didn't really talk a lot about how you've engaged with the team there and I just wouldn't mind talking it's been a massive success what you know how do you you know how do you apportion credit for that it's our first end-to-end so from the the DD the acquisition to an actual exit I think got to give those guys a load of credit as well they've really helped us shape our model you know so you always have a theory when you go into you know a new space of like this work how we're going to add value here here and here yeah and going through that process with those guys we had a really good relationship honest and and they've also given us the feedback for our model that's helped shape you know how we approach our next few acquisitions so we're actually really grateful for that it was a great acquisition it was a great return but actually the learning that we've got from it and the interaction with those guys we think actually it's just made us so much more better and fit for purpose for the future so So, yeah, grateful for the return and grateful for the experience with them.

35:06That's great. Well, it was a win-win. And this was a win-win as well. Time for a quick break. When we come back, Jonathan and I will be discussing the interview and then we'll be answering listener questions.

35:22Back for the second half of the Dealmaker Uncut podcast. We've just interviewed Paul Gadman of E-Complete. What did you think, Jonathan? I thought it was really interesting. I mean, what they've got is a real specialism. As we discussed, not every investor is keen on the consumer market. And what they are offering is a solution where they're interested in a bit of the market that other people are less interested in. And they're providing an opportunity to improve businesses using their skills and experience. And they prove that it works. So I think that it was a really interesting story. I really liked him.

36:00I thought it sounds like the offering's really good. Yeah, he's the guy who comes in with two coffees, literally two coffees as well. I think the great thing about what Paul and Andy have done is they've stuck to their knitting, which is the e-commerce space as well, and it is such a compelling story as well. And actually, I think it's the sort of story that private equity can't ignore. This next section is called Ask Jonathan. It's when listeners can ask you any question they want. We've got two cracking questions today. There's a little, well, there's a well-known phrase, which is wall street has only got to sneeze and the rest of the world catches a cold you just spent a week in alvarez and marcel's new york office i don't know what the weather was like but what's the market like stateside jonathan the weather was really hot actually um unusually they had a seasonal high and they've and they've um over there what what's interesting valuations are really rich at the moment obviously um it's been quite well documented that um the tech ai in particular AI part of the tech market has been very highly rated and I think that means that over there valuations are strong.

37:06When I was over there actually I met a couple of businesses from the UK that were over there pitching to investors specifically to try to take advantage of that bit of arbitrage where the market in the US is so strong that they were expecting they could get a turn or two extra um on a on a sale month a sale process so um yeah the the economy there is is in in good growth and and their investor base is confident um how that whether it'll last uh in you know enduringly into the future time will tell might might be a correction due but at the moment that it's good over there i saw a photo as well on your instagram account what game did you watch yeah we we went to see uh the new york giants play the philadelphia eagles which they were apparently destined to lose heavily and in fact they won uh so apparently it was the best best new york giants game uh to go to for about a decade okay um final questions from a big fan of the podcast and says jonathan i love the podcast but as an advisor can you explain your role in the deal and I'm just glad they didn't ask me what I do but yeah what what do you do?

38:15So I suppose 85 % of the deals that we advise on or that I advise on we are sales processes so we're we're typically appointed as the lead advisor lead financial advisor to a bunch of shareholders who own a business to run the sale process so we help them prepare their business for sale we We appoint all the other advisors or help them appoint the other advisors, help them appoint due diligence providers and get the business prepared for sale. And then we then contact buyers, persuade them why they should be interested in the business. And then we conduct a sale process, typically a two-round process.

38:59We approach lots of potential buyers, receive offers. and then we run a second round where a lot of the due diligence is actually completed by maybe two or three buyers and get final bids and then negotiate a final deal and get the deal completed. So all that will typically take anything from six to nine months. But we're often working with entrepreneurs and founders, sometimes with private equity houses, but often those individuals have a lot of emotional investment in their businesses. So a lot of what we're doing is helping people understand what's happening in the process and we're often as much social workers as we are corporate financiers.

39:48But I suppose what I love about it is helping somebody who's built up a business. It's often the most important deal they'll ever do in their lives. you know the appointing us as advisors is probably the most important advisory appointment and helping them realize their life's work or um 10 years work or whatever is is is really fulfilling um yeah so that's that's what we do no and uh very and very well you do it too and that's all for this episode of the dealmaker uncut podcast powered by albert and marcel final shout out to the star of the show jonathan boyers thanks chris and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast, tell your friends and family and follow us on social media.